RIFLE - It's hard to beat Granny's pickled beets.

And Rifleite Karen Rhoades knows her secret recipe.

Rhoades, a 60-year-old grandmother of five, has won plenty of blue ribbons at the Garfield County Fair for her canning savvy.

It's a tradition passed down from her mother, and her mother's mother.

"Every since I was a young girl, I did 4-H," Rhoades said. "When I first moved to Rifle, I used to make my grandma's pickled beets and beet jelly, and I won blue ribbons for those."

Rhoades and her family spent 18 years living in Saudia Arabia, but eventually returned to Rifle, where her canning passion was again unsealed.

"I said, 'You know, I think I'll make Granny's pickled beets again,'" she recalled.

But she didn't stop at unbeatable beets.

"And I got my sister's recipe for hot dill pickles and made those."

After years of living in the Middle Eastern desert, where fresh vegetables were hard to come by, Rhoades decided to get busy and grow her own garden when she returned to Colorado. Her bountiful crops of tomatoes, peppers, beets, zucchinis, cucumbers, onions and berries have produced hundreds of Ball jars of jams, jellies, relishes, salsas, soup mixtures and pickled products.

Just like her 93-year-old mom - who will be in town from Wyoming for the fair - used to make.

"Mom used to do tomatoes and jellies, but she never put them in the fair," she said. "She just made them for us."

Rhoades also remembers her grandmother making foods from scratch. Her prize-winning beet recipes are her grandmother's, along with plenty of memories made in the kitchen.

"My grandmother was really special, just a fun lady. She died when I was 6," she said. "When she had friends who were sick, she'd make a dozen homemade doughnuts. She grew violets, and she would take those to friends who were sick. I just loved being with her. I would hang out in the kitchen with her."

The women in Rhoades' family aren't the only ones who inspired her gardening and canning hobbies.

"I grew up in Wyoming. ... We were just at the edge of town," she said. "My dad always had a garden. That's how I grew up, helping in the garden."

Rhoades has passed down her enthusiasm for horticulture to her own children and grandchildren. Her daughter, Brenda, and 13-year-old granddaughter, Becca, often help her out in the garden.

"I can so many things. I probably spend about 70 to 80 hours per season canning - at least," she said. "I think Becca would just want a jar of pickled beets for her birthday if she could. She'd just eat the whole thing."

She has encouraged her grandchildren to enter floral arrangements, vegetables and photography in the Garfield County Fair. Rhoades also likes to help her Rifle community neighbors and friends with canning.

"I'd be happy to show anyone how to can," she said. "My friend Darlene Mackley is really the reason why I started. She's always been there helping. She's always been Miss Fair."

Along with her fresh preserving displays, Rhoades is also a repeat first-place winner in the Commissioner's Cookie Jar Contest. Garfield County commissioners judge the originality and creativity of cookie jars or containers. And of course the cookies' flavor.

Ribbons for this year's open class will be announced on Thursday.

Rhoades is never short on the creative end of things. She always has original ideas.

But she wasn't always in line for the blue ribbon.

Can it • Canning is a method of preserving food by first sealing it in air-tight jars, cans or pouches, and then heating it to a temperature that destroys contaminating microorganisms. • Foods that must be pressure canned include most vegetables, meats, seafood, poultry and dairy products. The only foods that may be safely canned in a boiling water bath (without high pressure) are highly acidic foods with a pH below 4.6, such as fruits, pickled vegetables, or other foods to which acid has been added. • During the early revolutionary wars, French newspaper Le Monde, prompted by the government, offered a hefty cash award of 12,000 francs to any inventor who could devise a cheap and effective method of preserving large amounts of food. The massive armies of the period required regular supplies of quality food, so preservation became a necessity. In 1809, French confectioner Nicolas François Appert developed a method of vacuum-sealing food inside glass jars. • Glass containers were unsuitable for transportation, so they were replaced with cylindrical tin or wrought-iron canisters (later shortened to "cans"), which were cheaper and quicker to make and much more resilient than fragile glass jars. Tin-openers were not to be invented for another 30 years - at first, soldiers had to cut the cans open with bayonets or smash them open with rocks. - Source: Wikipedia

"The very first year I did it I was in very last place. I didn't know what they were looking for," she said. "One year I had cookies - all filled in the center - in a baby buggy that said 'These little babies are full of it.'"

Rhoades enjoys the competition of the Garfield County Fair open class events, but she also strives to preserve an age-old tradition.

"I think canning is becoming a dying thing," she said. "And I think that's a shame."

Long live Granny's pickled beets.



Contact April Clark: 945-8515, ext. 16601

aclark@postindependent.com